


we are messes (that's why we work so well together)

by keeplovinanyway



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slice of Life, VidCon, the vidcon story of how they missed their flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 04:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11350317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeplovinanyway/pseuds/keeplovinanyway
Summary: Dan and Phil go to VidCon and miss their flight. Because they're just talented like that.





	we are messes (that's why we work so well together)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks do DnP for messing up so badly and talking about it at VidCon and [autumnheart for transcribing it](http://indepthbants.com/topic880-625.html#p62528), your work was very helpful for the writing of this fic
> 
> [dizzy wrote this before me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11303256) and I stole your idea of the airport hotel, I am sorry, but it did seem to make the most sense and I literally have no ideas how airports work (also yours was brilliant as always I am in constant awe)
> 
> disclaimer: I literally don't know a thing about airports and flights, please excuse all inconsistencies

The morning starts like this: Dan’s alarm beeping, him hitting snooze two times. After the second time he blinks his eyes open, shoves his hand in Phil’s face, and hears the snoring stopping for a short moment. When it beeps the third time he groans and turns it off, as Phil grumbles something intelligible and smothers his face into his side.

It’s sunny outside, the room covered in soft rays of light that’s glimpsing through the blinds. Dan remembers VidCon and feels a little bubble of excitement and slight anxiousness form in his stomach. He shifts a bit so that he can gather the sleep heavy body next to his into his arms; presses a kiss onto a forehead.

It earns him a uncoordinated shove against his chest.  Phil’s hand stays there afterwards, fingers limp and slightly curled. It makes Dan smile, warm from deep inside.

“Morning,” he whispers, voice raw and low, “it’s VidCon day.” His hand rubs across Phil’s back with just enough pressure to not be simply calming. Waking Phil up is always a task, but it’s one he’s perfected over the years.

Phil, who shortly blinks open his eyes only to immediately scrunch them tightly closed right after. Who buries his head into Dan’s armpit and groans again. “I don’t wanna.”

Dan rubs him again firmly, squeezes him a bit. “Come on, up with you. I’ll shower with you.”

That’s enough motivation it seems, Phil extracting his face from his body and gazing up at him, looking adorable with his ruffled hair and his eyes just barely in focus. Dan chuckles and kisses him awake more properly. They’ve got enough time before a flight for once. He’s going to make use of that.

***

“I had a sex dream last night,” Phil says. He’s shampooing his hair and Dan blinks up at him against the stream of water coming down, hands still washing down the shower gel. 

“Was I any good?”

Phil smirks. “It wasn’t about you.”

Oh. Dan feels that weird little feeling again where he’s adamant to show that he’s not irrationally bothered by these things anymore and all is totally normal, and he’s not sure if this weird feeling he has means that he  _is_ still bothered, or just that he thinks too much. Either way, he stretches across Phil to grab the shampoo bottle and raises an eyebrow at him as a sign to continue.

Phil laughs; probably seeing right through his attempt at nonchalance.

“It may have been Benedict Cumberpatch.”

“Oh my god, Phil.”

“What! He has a very nice… personality.”

“Personality. I am sure that was what mattered to you in that moment.”

“Yes, definitely,” Phil nods, “this, and that he entered the dream on a unicorn.” 

Dan snorts. A unicorn, that is so Phil. He moves to stand under the water and wash out the shampoo, and Phil swats his hands away to do it for him. Well, what a man would he be to decline such an offer. Phil’s voice rumbles softly behind him as he continues to speak.

“He was very good, I’ll have to tell you. Could do all kinds of things. Crazy acrobatics. Stamina for hours. Deepthroating.”

Dan lightly hits his elbow back into Phil’s stomach, earning himself a chuckle. “Excuse you. I can deepthroat you.”

“Can you? I can’t remember. Might have to help my memory a little...”

That cheeky fucker.

“You cheeky fucker,” he says, rinsing out the rest of his shampoo before he drops to his knees and presses Phil against the wall. “You planned this.”

***

They’re dressed and their hair is styled (well, more so Phil’s, Dan doesn’t have to do much styling anymore) and there’s still an hour left before they have to leave. The suitcases are packed, their phones are charging, everything’s going perfectly. It’s almost eerie, really.

Phil walks in on Dan scrolling through twitter. “Wanna have breakfast?”

Dan nods, “sure.”

“Oh, Dan- you have your passport, right?”

Dan pats the back pocket of his trousers. “Right here. Why?”

Phil blushes, which is- interesting.

“Oh, just- nothing.”

“Phil?”

More blushing, and then Phil’s turning around and walking to the kitchen. He mumbles his answer, but Dan catches it nonetheless:

“I dreamed you lost it.”

Dan doesn’t stop laughing at his superstitious boyfriend until the anime starts playing.

***

It’s fifteen minutes until the car’s supposed to pick them up and Dan suddenly decides that he wants comfier clothes for his flight. He decided on that one pair of black jeans because he feels most confident in them, but actually they do cut off the circulation in his legs after a while because they’re so tight, and the flight they’re going on is long. Phil urges him to be quick but it’s fine, all is fine, they have got loads of time left. He picks sweatpants that look kind of classy still and shoves his jeans back into the suitcase.

When he joins Phil again in the upstairs lounge, he’s watering the houseplants. He sees Dan and raises an eyebrow at him, almost watering the floor right next to the plants until Dan rushes in to steady his hand. “I shouldn’t trust you with this.”

Phil glares a little and then moves his gaze towards his legs. “You wearing these?”

“Yeah,” Dan’s confident in his response. Sure, he doesn’t usually wear sweatpants outside, he always feels judged when he does but it’s probably all in his head, other people wear sweatpants for their flights all the time, there’s literally no reason for him to squeeze himself into uncomfortable trousers that do nothing but look pretty.

His confidence in that decision lasts for all about twelve minutes, until the exact moment when Phil’s phone dings with the message stating that their driver has arrived. Phil, who is wearing trousers perfectly well suited for public and potential fan selfies, Phil who is about to carry down his suitcase and looks over to a frantic looking Dan.

“I just- I’m gonna change real quick,” Dan states, darting to his suitcase and wrenching it open at the same time as he attempts to shimmy out of his sweatpants. What did he think anyway, sweatpants on his flight to VidCon, they were bound to run into fans, and he would feel all grimy and lazy and unbearably self-conscious. So, yeah, he does have to change again.

“Dan-” he hears Phil say, tone exasperated but still kind of fond if he listens closely enough.

“It’s fine!” He flashes a smile up towards his boyfriend. “The car arrived early! We have enough time.”

Phil sighs and tells him he’s going to walk down already just as Dan fishes out a random pair of black trousers and leaves his sweatpants on the floor, he’s not going to wear them there anyway. He jumps up and down a little as he hurries to put the new ones on, hands fishing for his phone that he laid out at the small table, already searching out his shoes afterwards. It’s not even that late, he reasons, they’ve planned plenty of time. Phil’s got no reason to be annoyed with him, even if he does those things last minute, it’s no problem, they are always just fine.

Still, Dan’s a bit breathless as he arrives out on the street where Phil’s standing awkwardly next to the car, at a loss for smalltalk already as it seems.

“Dan, there you are,” he sighs at him in relief. “You got everything? Phone, wallet, passports?”

His phone, yes, pressing reassuringly into his thigh, wallet he can still see himself putting into his backpack just moments earlier, passport- passport. Where is his passport? He remembers putting it _somewhere_ earlier, where was that? It wasn’t his backpack, he is suddenly sure, he wouldn’t have put it in his suitcase just like that either- damn it, he really can’t remember.

Phil eyes him up in concern, and Dan feels an awful wave of dread washing over him.

“I don’t know where my passport is.”

***

They’ve searched everywhere. After they ran up the stairs, the annoyed gaze of their driver still on their backs, they took apart every corner they could possibly imagine passports to be in. It wasn’t in the ‘important things’ drawer. It wasn’t in the office. There’s several surfaces where they sometimes just lay their things on, but they couldn’t find it on any of them. Phil searched both their bedside drawers as Dan was gazing under the sofas. Nothing. No passports to be found.

From outside they hear the driver honk loudly. Dan meets Phil’s eyes, he looks frantic and anxious and annoyed and Dan feels so bad, and so anxious too. They can’t go without a passport, they’re making someone else wait and feel uncomfortable, they’re going to miss their flight, they’re-

“Dan, think again, please. Where did you last see it?”

“I already told you-” Oh. Oh, yeah. It was on the bed but then he put it in the back pocket of his trousers, he suddenly remembers. The trousers that are in the suitcase. Which is outside next to the car.

He doesn’t even say a word as he bolts down the stairs, hears Phil shouting after him. “Outside!” he yells in response, wrenching open the front door. Their driver put the suitcase in the trunk and Dan has to knock at his window, has to interrupt him as he tries to say that they should have left ages ago, has to ask him to unlock the trunk.

When Phil emerges, Dan is on his knees on the pavement, suitcase open and frantically searching through his formerly neatly folded clothes. Why does he have to have so many black trousers!

“Dan,” he hears, “Dan, did you find it?”

“It’s in my pocket-” His fingers skim something harder, and there, there it is, there’s the passport. He found it. He found the passport.

“You found it. God, Dan.”

Dan would look sheepish if he had the time, but all he does instead is shove everything back in again, Phil shuffling nearby but being more of a hindrance than anything, and finally, finally having it all in the car and sitting down on a seat next to Phil.

Their driver looks entertained now, at least this mess was good for something Dan muses, at least he’s not angry anymore.

He breathes in deeply, just in time with Phil. They glance at each other and smile tentatively.

“M’sorry,” Dan mumbles, feeling decidedly more guilty now that it turns out it was indeed entirely his fault. Phil sighs, it’s a mixture of exasperated and fond that Dan knows all too well.

“We made it, didn’t we? Just… don’t do that again.”

Dan nods a sheepish smile and thinks to himself how glad he is for the blowjob bonus points he collected earlier.

***

Their car ride is an unusual one, to put it lightly.

Firstly, it is incredibly hot. Dan feels sweat gathering at his temples and above his lip after all of three minutes, and tries to open a window, but the button doesn’t work. Phil’s not in a much better condition. His general travel sickness wouldn’t be too bad for a short car ride like this one, but add in the heat and the stress beforehand and he looks as pale as Dan did earlier when he’d noticed he’d lost the passport.

Their driver opens a window at some point, which makes them both breathe in deeply in relief – but also cringe, because, there’s the second unusual part: Their driver seems to be just a bit more on the weird side of not-normal. It had started off with him talking to his satnav, telling it where he wouldn’t go and thanking it for suggestions he seemed to deem good enough. That had been the first amused glance Dan and Phil shared. Then, suddenly, their gaze had turned a bit more alarmed, as their driver referred to the satnav as “love”. Dan tried hard to not snort out loud at that, especially when immediately after the driver swore quite nastily at it, because of the newest direction he didn’t like all that much. And then they drove past some protesters, and that is when the window is opened, and the driver shouts at them to ‘Get a job’. The second-hand embarrassment is enough to make both of them physically cringe.

After about 20 minutes in the unbearable heat and the weird driver that they both try their hardest to ignore, Dan notices Phil becoming more anxious. Their driver isn’t necessarily following the instructions of the satnav, and he doesn’t seem to know his way around London all that well either. They are taking quite long. Phil’s probably worried about not arriving on time, he thinks. He goes to quickly check the time- and freezes.

“Dan?”

“When does the gate close again?”

“At 4 pm,” Phil says, “are we-”

Dan gulps. “It’s ten to.”

“What?! Ten to what?”

“Four.”

As it turns out, Phil booked the car in the wrong timezone. Dan doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that, but Phil looks like he’s about to completely break down, so he does neither.

“We’re just gonna have to run,” he says.

Phil looks terrified. “If we even make it.”

***

Spoiler: They don’t make it.

When they arrive at the airport, there’s literally two minutes on the clock until they’re supposed to be at the gate. They get their bags and start running, don’t even say goodbye to the driver, not even Phil. Dan feels like he’s going to collapse any minute, his body will give in, he will die- Phil is not much better next to him, but they keep running, and fuck, they so are not used to this. It seems to take forever. He can’t run anymore but he has to because if he doesn’t they- he doesn’t think about that, he just runs and it hurts and he runs.

And then they’re there, they see the lady at the gate, she smiles, oh god Dan could cry-

“I am sorry boys,” she smiles sweetly, and Dan thinks what the fuck, “you’ve missed your flight.”

“What?!” He’s misheard that, he’s sure, it can’t be-

“How late are we?” Phil wheezes as he asks, his lungs are literally rattling.

The woman smiles again, wide and open, totally inappropriate for this awful situation. “Ohh, we closed bag drop two minutes ago, I am so sorry.”

Two minutes. Two fucking minutes.

***

They’ve walked off to the side, mutely, both struggling with their own internal turmoil. Phil had leaned against the wall before just slowly sliding down until he’s sat right their on the airport floor. Dan had looked at him, mixture of shock and fondness swirling through him, before starting to pace again.

He stops now, puts his head in his hands, and looks at Phil through his fingers.

“Phil.”

Phil looks at him, and his heart squeezes in his chest.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Phil shakes his head softly. “We missed our flight.”

They missed their flight. They really did. Dan’s entire body still hurts, he is still coughing and wheezing from all the running that his body isn’t used to, but it didn’t matter, they didn’t make it.

When Dan talks again, he can hear himself how close to tears he is. “Well what good YouTuber’s we are. Can’t even meet their own fucking fans.”

He doesn’t say how much he hates himself right now for not thinking about the passport. He doesn’t say that he’s angry at Phil, he doesn’t say that he is scared- so fucking terrified of what everyone’s going to say. He is going to disappoint literally everyone, they’re going to stand there and wait for them and have paid to see them but they won’t be there, because he is a fuck up and can’t even be grateful for what they have given to him. He wants to cry and roll into a ball and turn back time to just make it all be okay, but he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t need to, he looks at Phil and he knows he can see it in his eyes. Just as much as he can see how scared Phil is of telling them that they won’t be there, how much he’s beating himself up for booking the car wrong, how helpless and small he feels.

Dan kind of feels like he’s going to puke.

***

There’s two seats left on a flight at 5am next morning. It’s not ideal, it is a worse connection and they won’t sit next to each other and they will probably, hopefully, just barely arrive on time for their stage event. It’s expensive and unnecessary and they hate it, but they take it anyway, because they don’t have another choice.

They’ll be at the gate at 3:30, because no, they won’t risk this shit another time. There’s a moment when they think they could go home, but it’s not really worth it, and by the time they have the flight figured out it’s 7pm already and they are both achy and tired and simply done.

“Do you want to stay at the airport hotel?,” the friendly worker behind the desk asks.

Dan glances over at Phil, who has bags under his eyes and deep worry creases next to his mouth and stands so close that he is almost leaning on him, and says yes.

***

“This was the worst day of my entire life,” Phil mumbles into the mattress that he flopped face-down onto. Dan huffs a brief laugh and flops down by his side, carefully angling so that he kind of lands on Phil a bit.

“Ow,” he says, “you hurt me.”

“Why’d you fall on me then,” Phil states.

They shuffle around a bit until they’re facing each other, and Phil drops a kiss on Dan’s forehead, because sometimes he’s cheesy like that, and Dan’s face splits into a smile, because he is cheesy like that too.

There’s a sincere sort of fondness in Phil’s eyes, and Dan prompts him to explain with a gaze of his own. Phil smiles a bit and shakes his head, as if in spite of himself.

“It’s just… I’m glad you were here for this.”

“Even though I lost my passport?”

Phil laughs. “Well, yeah, it’s totally your fault that we didn’t make it.”

“Whaaaat?” Dan squawks and swats at Phil. “You booked the wrong car! In the wrong timezone! Who even does that!”

To Phil’s credit, he does blush a bit at that. “Still your fault,” he says though. “Because even with the wrong car we still would have made it if we didn’t leave fifteen minutes late because of your passport. Two minutes, Dan!” He pokes him on the nose twice, and Dan scrunches up his face. “Two minutes!”

He is cute, but also wrong. “Yeah but if you had booked the car right, we’d have had an hour spare, and my passport wouldn’t have been a problem.”

Phil continues to disagree, and Dan continues to tell him off for how stupid that is, and at some point they decide to make this into what they will do on stage at VidCon, because it’s much better than what they’d have planned in the first place anyway.

Eventually, they go to sleep. The bed is tiny and uncomfortable but Dan thinks that they probably deserve that.

***

“We did it.” Phil’s voice is full of exhaustion. Dan can relate.

“We did it.”

They woke up in the middle of the night, they boarded their flight, spent all those hours kind-of-not-really sleeping ten rows apart, they got their taxi, felt the hectic as the traffic was so slow, reached VidCon just barely in time, and did their bit.

And now it’s over, and the crowd was happy to see them, and they are actually here, they made it.

Even for two notoriously anti-social dudes, they’ve never spent less time at VidCon on their very first day. They smile and wave at their colleagues from a distance, but Phil weaves them through the splatter of people with determination and Dan gladly follows.

Finally, finally they are in their hotel room, a proper one this time, with two comfy king size beds and a nice bathroom and space and quiet.

“I will never lose my passport again,” Dan mumbles into the quiet of the night as they’re next to each other in the dark, not cuddling because they can’t sleep properly that way but still in the same bed because they couldn’t sleep properly otherwise either.

Phil chuckles, then yawns. “I can’t promise anything about the car. That was quite fun you know.”

It’s a lie, it sucked total balls, but it is what it is and as Dan shuffles a bit closer to Phil and breathes in deeply, he feels finally calm again. They’ll fuck up again, because that is who they are, but they’ll be okay, just as they are now. And that’s going to have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> when I saw everyone complaining about how the times they talked about in their story don't match up I literally didn't care, but now I want to rip their heads off. Howell. Lester. If you left EARLY for your flight, how on earth did you have to stay at the airport for another early flight?? explain this immediately to alleviate my frustration.
> 
> (I don't quite know how I feel about this fic, it feels a bit rushed and weird at the end, but I really wanted to write it and this seems to be the best I could do. hope you liked it anyway!)


End file.
